Cropping system co-design guide now available

December 12, 2013

The first STEPHY Guide on co-designing cropping systems less reliant on pesticides is now available in English. The Guide introduces a four-step learning process for co-designing alternative low-input cropping systems and can be used with advisers, farmers, R&D engineers, local stakeholders, researchers, trainers and students.

The STEPHY Guide is part of the drive to significantly reduce pesticide use in France, which aims to halve pesticide use nationally over the coming decade, and was produced through a collaborative effort involving INRA researchers, extension staff from Agricultural Chambers and National Technical Institutes, and government employees from the French Agriculture, Environment, Research and Education Ministries

The first of the manuals available in English focuses on arable crops and takes users through a four-step process that can be followed using a Rapid or Comprehensive Programme:

An assessment of the existing situation, where the aim is to understand the overall objectives of the farmer, the farm's strengths and weaknesses, and to identify the farm's cropping system and the problems encountered.

The joint co-design of alternative low-pesticide input cropping systems by advisers, farmers and others. This involves defining the objective of the redesign and identifying the available crops and techniques, thus broadening the horizons for change on the farm. The new rotation and cropping management plan per crop are then combined in an alternative cropping system.

An evaluation of these alternative low-pesticide input cropping systems is then conducted according to multiple criteria, including the level of pesticide use. This evaluation can either be qualitative or, in the Comprehensive Programme, quantitative using the STEPHY calculator to produce details of criteria such as input pressure (Treatment Frequency Index, nitrogen balance etc) and environmental, economic and social performances.

A collective discussion of results.

The STEPHY Guide has already been used to train more than 1,200 advisers in France plus 300 farmers and 300 students, and its authors say it is best used for group work (farmer groups, mixed groups of farmers, advisers and researchers, students, local stakeholders etc), though it can also be used by a single adviser working with a farmer.

The authors emphasise that the STEPHY co-design approach is not just a new technical guide, but a systems approach aiming to significantly reduce pesticide use, to solve problems and to broaden the options available for changing cropping systems. It seeks to encourage a 'de novo' approach encouraging people to consider radical changes for radical innovation even though real-life changes on the farm might be step-by-step.

In the preface to the guide, INRA researcher Jean-Marc Meynard writes: “The approach offered in this guide puts agronomy back at the centre of our thinking on agricultural practices. In fact, agronomy offers not only technical solutions to limit pest populations, but also a framework for a systems approach to choosing techniques suitable for each situation and to combine them for synergies. The authors of this guide say, ‘There is no ‘typical’ example of effective combinations for managing pests: these combinations are to be constructed case-by-case, according to the means available and the particular constraints faced’. It is a renewal based on diversity: biological diversity (long rotations, polyculture, beneficials) makes its comeback in the fields and diversity in crop management is back in the farm advisory sector.”

While the first guide focuses on arable crops, the STEPHY approach has been tested and approved not only in mixed farming systems but also in vegetable, tropical and perennial systems. Guides for these systems will be produced in the future.